Wait? No electric tractors yet? Swappable batteries would be perfect.
A tractor does actual work like pulling an implement like a plow or spinning the PTO to power a machine like a wood splitter or well drill. Airplane engines are rebuilt every 5,000ish miles because they’re constantly running at like 50% load, it’s much harder on the engine than moving a car, a tractor is very similar. Car engines do very little work once you’re up to speed, it only takes a fraction of the max power a…
Off by an order of magnitude. Average TBO (which airplane engines routinely exceed if they don’t rust out) is 2,000 hours assuming piston, or about 300,000 miles for a Piper Arrow at cruise speed.
You don't have to prioritize them. You can choose to encourage the rich to hoard their money elsewhere. But there are consequences to every policy decision.
We got rich by not prioritizing the needs of investors in the first place. Maybe we need to start prioritizing the needs of the larger society again.
You certainly don't need economic investment to become "rich" in culture, enlightenment, or humanity, for sure. And there is value to that.
However, financiers played an indisputable role in the current state of economic wealth in today's world.
Up until a year ago I was regularly using a Massy Fergusson 135 [0] (Perkins Diesel version), made sometime in the 1970s. It was wonderful! So amazing to drive and use. Clunky and heavy, but you really really felt like you were using a machine. In low gears, if you put you foot down on the accelerator the engine would roar, and your speed would barely change! And there was no fancy technology in it at all. If I was i…
My grandfather had one of these, though gas powered. It may have been the Ford model, cannot remember, though his was built I believe in the late 40s / early 50s. One story that still makes me laugh, he couldn't start it one day, and asked my grandmother to give him a pulling start w/ their ford diesel pickup. One look and my about 12 year old self just knew she wanted to be anywhere else but there (some foreshadowing, she had a reputation for a lead foot). Grandpa had already tied a rope from the tractor to the truck, and I believe he was in maybe one of the lower gears ready to pop the clutch after he got up to speed. Grandma tore (yes, tore) out of the yard shifting gears, and she was accelerating down their long driveway headed for the main road as Grandpa started frantically waving his hat trying to get her to stop. I'm pretty sure he never asked her again to help start the tractor. And yeah, the tractor was started, probably in the first 50 feet of that episode.
admittedly, i'm not a farmer nor an expert in data driving farming. but getting a farmer the ability to precisely drive a tractor in a field so that planting seeds, applying fertilizer, and any of the other steps would be a huge win. The settings used when doing that can easily come from bigFarmData gained from other sources. Can it be used even more precisely when everything is gathered/integrated by one company? Th…
The economics of farming (at least in the US) are brutal. Scaling up is really the only way to make a living long term. Some of this is due to equipment cost (look up how much a combine costs), and some is due to competition. It's not unusual for a farmer to be land rich and cash poor. If you want to see a couple of guys learning how to farm from scratch, visit https://www.youtube.com/@spencerhilbert . Spencer and hi…
I'll check out Spencer's channel. For a comedy perspective, there's Clarkson's Farm or Growing Belushi. Even though they are for entertainment, there's a still a lot of info in those shows to not be written off.
However, I'm not as interested in being a farmer at that level. I'm much more interested in the homesteading aspect of farming. I'm not trying to feed the world as much as me and mine and maybe some extra. So not just farming, but also some ranching with sheep/goats/chickens/pigs. I have friends doing this that I'm keeping an eye on. They had a head start as their kids grew up in FFA and are already familiar with raising live stock, and then having them processed to make that part much less daunting.
Part of the story why we can‘t feel the hypothetical productivity gains of the last century is that certain goods became 1. more expensive and 2. last shorter. This movement (as mentioned in the tractor example) might be the result of people realizing this: what drives GDP (expensive throw away crap) might not always drive wealth.
Yes, free, and created in Canada by developers not burdened by American red tape.
I have a hard time imagining that canada has expertise in tractor software. Let's rein our nationalist tendencies in to something that approaches common sense
Hum... i can understand your throwaway status.
You are certainly aware that we , in Canada, have expertise in software that is quite a bit more advanced than tractor software.
I have a hard time imagining that canada has expertise in tractor software. Let's rein our nationalist tendencies in to something that approaches common sense
Hum... i can understand your throwaway status. You are certainly aware that we , in Canada, have expertise in software that is quite a bit more advanced than tractor software.
The economics of farming (at least in the US) are brutal. Scaling up is really the only way to make a living long term. Some of this is due to equipment cost (look up how much a combine costs), and some is due to competition. It's not unusual for a farmer to be land rich and cash poor. If you want to see a couple of guys learning how to farm from scratch, visit https://www.youtube.com/@spencerhilbert . Spencer and hi…
I'll check out Spencer's channel. For a comedy perspective, there's Clarkson's Farm or Growing Belushi. Even though they are for entertainment, there's a still a lot of info in those shows to not be written off. However, I'm not as interested in being a farmer at that level. I'm much more interested in the homesteading aspect of farming. I'm not trying to feed the world as much as me and mine and maybe some extra. So…
I get that. Crop farming is so different than raising animals.
I think this is a reaction to the incredibly locked down ecosystem that most of these mfgs are pushing. However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability. IMO, there is plenty of space for an OEM who can play nice with others, offer an open (and vibrant ecosystem), and keep users coming back by choice, not by lock-in.
> However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability. These low-tech tractors could become a hot bed for open source experimentation. Nothing stopping someone from sticking a tablet on the dash. You could run GPS harvesting optimization software or some webthing locally. Could be cloud or clever DiY farmers could run their farm off a loca…